


butterflies and the jitterbug (one sunlit spring)

by anabel



Category: British Royalty RPF
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Wartime Girlfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 09:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2463035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the oldest story in the book – princess meets girl. (With perhaps a bit more motor oil than usual.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	butterflies and the jitterbug (one sunlit spring)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joanne_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_c/gifts).



“Call me Chummy,” the new mechanic said, extending a hand. “Camilla’s far too fancy for me, don’t know what my mother was thinking. Probably, _oh Lord, she’s three weeks early and I’ve got the parson over for tea today, I won’t have time to make a cake_ , knowing my mother. But then you wouldn’t know my mother, don’t know me for that matter. I’m just down from Liverpool. You?”

Elizabeth felt slightly dazed. She shook the proffered hand, which was big and competent but looked clean. Her own hands weren’t anything to be proud of at the moment – no matter how careful she tried to be, she always managed to get oil on her hands when she was working on an engine.

“I’m Elizabeth,” she said. “From London.”

It came out rather more shyly than she’d intended – she’d been here a full two weeks now, she didn’t need to be nervous around the girls any longer. In fact, she hadn’t really been that nervous around the girls even from the beginning – they were a nice group, friendly and down-to-earth. Some of them were a little overawed by her, but that had worn off once they’d seen her elbow-deep in automobile parts, a kerchief protecting her hair.

But Chummy was different, somehow. She was big and bluff and her nose was red, but her smile made Elizabeth’s stomach feel funny. There was a gap between her front teeth, and it made her look impish. Elizabeth wondered if she was.

“Elizabeth?” Chummy said now, flopping down onto the bed across from hers. “That’s a big name for a little thing like you. How about Liz? Oh, this bunk taken? Gosh, it’s hard as a rock. At least it’s not oily.”

“Nobody’s ever called me Liz,” Elizabeth confessed. Well, Margaret called her Lizzy sometimes, but everyone else called her Lilibet.

Chummy turned on her side, propping her cheek up with one hand. “No? What’s your boyfriend call you?”

Elizabeth found herself turning red, although she really didn’t know why. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” 

“No boyfriend?” Chummy said, with mock dismay. “A pretty girl like you? We’ll have to change that. I know the Gorgon will have us working nonstop – I’ve only just been transferred, haven’t had a chance to look at the billet yet, but there must be a Gorgon here, there’s always a Gorgon, a stern one with eyes like bayonets, who doesn’t believe in rouge or stockings or dances. Still, we’ll have to get you out. The Americans will have dances, and I’ve brought two dresses with me, so you can borrow one if you’d like.”

Elizabeth thought Chummy had rather more bosom than she did, but didn’t quite know how to mention it without being unforgivably rude. “You’ve just transferred?”

“Supposed to go to the next post, but they said you were one short after a girl went home to get married,” Chummy said, nodding. “I thought, well, that’s a lark, they just let you go home from your important job to get married, but then they explained that she had a bun in the oven… well, not exactly _explained_ …”

Elizabeth felt herself start to flush. It wasn’t that she was a total innocent, she knew enough about these things – mostly from her cousin Margaret, who was only a year older but considered herself very worldly-wise – but the scene when Duncan had been discovered to be pregnant hadn’t been a pretty one. At least, Rivers had said, the father of Duncan’s baby was her fiancé, so it wasn’t as bad as it _could_ have been. Imagine if it had been an American G.I.!

To distract from her traitorous cheeks, she said, “So you haven’t met the other girls yet, then.”

“Not yet,” Chummy said, carelessly, kicking her feet up to rest them on the wall. Elizabeth bit back a reproof – they were grown women, not in a nursery – and felt slightly thrilled by the illicitness. “Are there any interesting ones? Besides you. You’re the most interesting, because I met you first, so you’re my favourite. But, you know, any prim parson’s daughters, or scandalous dipso actresses, or redheaded Irish girls?”

“Higgins is Irish, but she has brown hair,” Elizabeth said, doubtfully. “I don’t know if there are any actresses. I’m new myself – I only turned eighteen three weeks ago.”

“Gosh, I’m nineteen myself, I’m an old lady,” Chummy said, lazily, turning her head to smile at Elizabeth. “Old lady Chummy… bloody hell.”

“I beg your pardon?” Elizabeth said, shocked despite her determination to be more worldly.

Chummy sat straight up, nearly knocking herself silly on the bunk above. “I’m half asleep, that’s my only excuse, not that it’s a good one. You’re the princess!”

Elizabeth felt strangely let down. She hadn’t realised how much she liked it, being unrecognised. All the other girls had known straightaway, because Mrs Phillips had introduced her properly, of course. Not that they’d treated her any differently, well, not _exactly_ … but it wasn’t quite the same, was it? Nobody treated her with the same casualness they treated each other. Until Chummy, that was.

Perhaps the unexpected sting of disappointment made her less guarded than she might have been otherwise. “Yes,” she said, sitting up herself and steepling her fingers into a praying gesture. “But please forget it. Here I’m just a mechanic, doing my part for the war effort.”

It sounded horribly stilted in her own ears, but after a moment Chummy smiled. “Doing your part for King and Country?”

“Oh, _don’t_ let’s bring Papa into it,” Elizabeth said, laughing, but it was just the sort of teasing that the two Margarets, her sister and her cousin, would have used, and abruptly she felt much less homesick than she had the past three weeks. 

“If you say so, your honourableness,” Chummy said, throwing off a mock salute. 

“I do say so,” Elizabeth said – and, in a fit of daring, stuck out her tongue.

This time Chummy’s smile was more of a grin. “Righto, Liz.”

~*~

It took two weeks before Elizabeth dared believe that Chummy’s arrival had changed things. But it really had. Her charm was so completely disarming, the twinkle in her eye so contagious – and the things she could say with a straight face! – that the rest of the girls took to her immediately. Even Perkins, whose fiancé was in France and who was inclined to be worried and sullen, warmed to her.

From the start, however, Elizabeth was Chummy’s favourite. Not in a “this is the princess, we must all be properly respectful” way, either. Elizabeth lost count of the number of times Chummy clapped her on the shoulder as she walked by, or slung a oily rag at her just slow enough for her to catch, or shouted “Oi, Liz!” across the street. (Mrs Phillips had told her off for that, sounding scandalised, but Elizabeth had taken her aside later and managed to make her understand that she quite liked it, really, that it made her feel like she had a sister in the mechanic crew, and that made Mrs Phillips look almost misty, which was a miracle.)

Amidst all the work they did, it took Elizabeth another week after that to realise that Chummy was her favourite too.

And then one day Chummy slung an arm around her shoulder, saying “Oi, Liz, the Yanks are having a dance on Saturday. You’re coming. You can wear my blue dress, if you dare!” – and Elizabeth abruptly realised that she’d dare anything, if Chummy asked her to.

~*~

“You look good in my dress,” Chummy said. Her voice was low, a dark husk only half its usual volume.

Elizabeth looked at herself in the mirror. She knew better than to think she was a pretty girl; people who said she was were flatterers and not to be trusted. Her hair was nice, she thought, and her face looked pleasant when she smiled. 

Chummy’s dress was far more daring than she’d ever have chosen herself. The hemline was nearly indecent – “I hemmed it myself,” Chummy had said, laughing, “because my little sister tried to climb a fence in it, and the rip simply _wouldn’t_ mend properly” – and the neckline! The flush on Elizabeth’s cheek wasn’t from heat.

Or perhaps it was a little from heat. Chummy was standing very close.

“I know I shouldn’t have brought it down,” Chummy said, starting to rattle on as she always did. “I don’t know where we’d _possibly_ wear it that wouldn’t have us arrested. But it’s quite the prettiest thing I own, or was before Rosie caught it on that fencepost, and I could never be patient long enough to collect enough clothes coupons…” She trailed off. “The blue makes your eyes look beautiful.”

Perhaps it was the shyness in Chummy’s voice - _Chummy_ , who was never shy – that made Elizabeth look up and meet her eyes in the mirror.

The unguarded look she surprised lasted only for a second, before Chummy swallowed, took a shaky breath, and launched herself on again, but it was enough for Elizabeth. “Perhaps we could find some lace – well, where we’d find lace I don’t know – but if we did, we could lengthen the hem – maybe Rivers would help, she’s great with a needle…”

“Chummy,” Elizabeth said, turning, and with a single reckless movement she reached up and put a finger across Chummy’s lips.

For once, Chummy looked lost for words. 

Elizabeth breathed once, twice, savouring the moment, and then, gathering every spoonful of courage and pluck that she owned – and she owned a lot, because she was born a princess, and her father’s daughter, and the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria – she leaned up to replace her finger with her lips.

At first it wasn’t a very good kiss, because Elizabeth hadn’t a clue what she was doing, and Chummy seemed struck by lightning, or by a V2 rocket. Elizabeth had just begun to think that her cousin Margaret had greatly exaggerated the pleasures of kissing, when Chummy made a sound somewhere in her throat and changed their positions, and then, well, maybe Margaret hadn’t been so wrong after all. (She was the smart one, after all. A secretary for MI6 was much brainier work than a simple mechanic, although if Elizabeth hadn’t been a mechanic, she’d never have met Chummy, and oh, that would have been horrid.)

Elizabeth put Margaret out of her mind and concentrated on kissing Chummy, which was no less a wondrous event for being entirely unexpected. She felt shockingly wanton, in a dress that was only half-there, pressed in Chummy’s strong arms, with their lips doing _that_ … she felt more alive than she had ever felt before, really, and she gasped into the kiss, her hand tightening in Chummy’s hair.

“If you dare say ‘well, now I’ve kissed a princess’, I’ll slap you,” she said, when they broke apart.

Chummy’s eyes were soft, without the impish glint they usually held. “I was going to say, well, now I’ve kissed a Liz,” she said, and bent to kiss her again, her arms sliding around Elizabeth’s back.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and hung on, trying not to smile, because smiling seemed not to work with kissing very well, but she was hardly able to help it. Forget the Yanks’ dance, the butterflies in her stomach were already doing a jitterbug! She laughed, breathless, and Chummy laughed with her, and everything was perfect in the whole wide world, for this one shining moment.

~*~

They had three months together, that sunlit spring of 1945. 

In later years, Elizabeth would look back to that spring as one of the happiest of her life. Nevermind the German rockets falling on London, or driving at night in the dark streets, or sleeping on hard beds and never quite getting all the motor oil off her hands. She had Chummy, and that was enough – more than enough.

Her mother asked her, once, a few months after the war ended. Not exactly, not straight out, but as near as she could come; her mother was always the brains of the family. “Was there someone?” she asked, when she found Elizabeth staring out the window again, caught in a daydream.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, too heartsick to dissemble. They’d known it couldn’t last. They mightn’t have talked about it, because during a war, who talks about after? And someday, perhaps, a princess might have been able to love a girl from Liverpool, take her home to her parents, kiss her in front of the world. Someday. But not now, not in 1945, with the whole world full of joy, except for Elizabeth.

Her mother put a hand on her shoulder. “Not someone we could meet?”

An American, her mother probably thought, an American at one of those dances, who jitterbugged so wonderfully and laughed so loudly. Perhaps a black American, which would have scandalised her mother less than it would have the Americans. Neither, however, as much as Chummy would have.

“Not someone you could meet,” Elizabeth agreed, drearily, and then, breaking, “But I loved…”

Her mother held her, pressed close, and Elizabeth buried her face in her shoulder, feeling the hot tears prick at her eyes, and knowing she must never let them fall, because if she had to make this sacrifice, she was going to be the best Princess – and the best Queen – she could be.

That’s what Chummy had said, there at the last, with people all around them and no space for a private goodbye. “Be the best bloody Queen you can be,” she’d said, putting a finger under Elizabeth’s chin to raise it. Elizabeth had been keeping her chin down, trying to master her emotions, but when she’d met Chummy’s eyes, she’d seen that her own were not the only ones with a suspicious glint. “Be the best Queen, and then when I see you in the papers, I’ll say, that’s my Princess Liz.”

“I won’t be Queen for a long time,” Elizabeth had pointed out, hearing her voice tremble only slightly, “and when I am, I’ll hardly be Princess at the same time.”

But Chummy had shaken her head, and touched her thumb to Elizabeth’s lips, featherquick and sweet. “You’ll always be my Princess Liz.”

~*~

When Charles left her that day, Elizabeth sat for a long time, looking out the window.

So his story was to have a happy ending… he’d have his Camilla, at last, and make her his bride. Strange, that his true love and hers would have the same name – not that she’d ever thought of Chummy as Camilla, not once. She was only ever Chummy. Only… as if Chummy could ever be “only”.

She was glad for Charles, that times had changed. She only wished…

Perhaps it was a ghost of that long-ago impulsiveness, that came over her. With sudden decisiveness, she crossed to her telephone. “I need you to do something for me,” she said. “And I need you to not ask any questions.”

~*~

Elizabeth had been half-convinced that she’d be too late. It had been a long time since 1945. How many of their old crew were still living? She’d been prepared to meet Chummy’s daughter, or even her granddaughter, to be told of a happy life, well-lived. 

The old woman across the kitchen was a stranger to her for a long moment, caught in the middle of making bread, flour on her hands, her mouth half open in surprise.

“Sorry,” Elizabeth said. “The door was open. I thought I’d better come in.”

And then Chummy’s face lit up with a smile just as beautiful as the one Elizabeth had remembered all these years - that little gap between the front teeth just as perfect - and she was a stranger no longer. 

“Why,” she said, taking a step toward Elizabeth, and then another, “if it isn’t my Princess Liz.”

They got flour all over Elizabeth’s dress. Elizabeth didn’t care one fig.

~*~


End file.
